We have a beloved Mazda MPV minivan (FestVan).The driver’s window went down and stayed there. The passenger window is fine. The driver window button doesn’t make any noise (no struggling motor, no electric hum).
Our mechanic is on vacation.
Is there anything I can do? I can’t imagine that the two windows would be on separate fuses. Any way to manually get the window back up? Can I pull the door myself or will I likely end up with a hundred broken clips and a thousand tears? Do autoparts stores sell clips?
If diagnosing/fixing isn’t something I’m likely to succeed at, do I just start calling random mechanics? Take it to an autobody shop?
Unless you’re a pretty good amateur car mechanic I wouldn’t do it yourself. Taking the panel of an older car will be easier than a newer one, but I’d still get a mechanic. If ANY of the glass is showing you can try to pull it all way the up yourself, but there’s no guarantee it won’t fall down again while you’re on the highway/in the woods and maybe miles from a fix.
This isn’t an autobody job although that kind of place could probably fix this, it’s an ordinary-mechanic thing. Should not take longer than a couple hours depending how busy the shop is.
ETA, they may need to order parts depending on what’s wrong and how many sources are near you; but you might also be able to have them fix the window in place if the right part isn’t available.
It could be as simple as a blown fuse, or as involved as a burned up motor. I would get the manual out and replace the fuse that should be controlling that window, even if the fuse looks okay. If that doesn’t work I would go to a body shop and ask them to take a quick look. You may be able to pull up the window, at least temporarily, but there’s no guarantee it will stay up.
I agree that it is unlikely to be a fuse if the other window motor still operates. Just pulling the glass up, if it is even possible, and doing nothing to keep it there will almost certainly result in the window sliding back down in short order.
If you have no mechanic or shop to take the car before the weekend, I temporarily addressed this problem once by removing the door panel (yes, you’ll likely break/strip some panel clips; and yes, they do sell those at auto parts stores), pushing the glass up from the bottom and afixing it up. I used a small pair of locking pliers just under the glass to hold it in place. Reattach the door panel and you are good to go until your mechanic returns!
If that’s too much (it can be a pain in the butt, I hate working with door panels), this is one fix that I may trust to a chain mechanic shop.
I fixed the window in a Volkwagen Cabrio recently - part of the mechanism had worn out which I bought new but the motor was OK and reused.
You may be able to use duct tape as a sticky “handle” to put on the edge of the glass and pull it up. Try having someone push the “up” button as you’re pulling. Duct tape can hold it up out of the door if this is successful.
I would take this to a body shop - NOT a typical mechanic - they’re more used to disassembling clips and snaps that are cosmetic and sometimes irreplaceable.
Is it possible that the switch itself is dead? Did the window drop down by itself, or did you wind it down and then find you couldn’t raise it again?
If the latter, and you didn’t hear any odd noises, it’s likely going to be one of two things: Either the motor has just suddenly died (unlikely, IME) or the switch is failing. I’d suspect the switch.
Depending on the layout of your car, it may be fairly simple to find out - a lot of switches are clipped in and can be carefully levered out with a screwdriver. If you can do that, try swapping the switch around with the passenger side (or one of the rear ones) to see if that works.
Thanks. Split between not having enough time before the weekend to do it myself (for which I need to prudently include for three trips into town) and having someone do it. I suppose it could do it in one (clips, regulator and motor–if they’ll let me return the unusued part), but I’m kind of experienced at being inexperienced. What do you mean I need new encabulator?!)
There is no window at all to grip, so my faint hope of a manual lift mechanism is dashed against the rocks. I don’t know why car manufacturers don’t think of such things. In fact, wouldn’t a simple crank mechanism (maybe even on on each door) be better than these fault-prone electronics?
There was no noise when it stopped working. It was quiet, too—I was stopped to get the mail and there was nothing in the air but the delicate sound of lifters clicking out their beautiful song.
Will crawl around to see about the fuses (there are a thousand fuse diagrams out there but I can’t narrow one down to this vehicle. Not that it’s all that difficult to get down there, but still).
It’s looking like there will be a minimal chance of rain this weekend. If it’s not the fuse, the duct tape and plastic route may be in the offing (I’d rather give money to my regular mechanic than anyone else).
Edit: Window went down fine. Will check the switches when I’m checking the fuses
I was going to suggest duct tape and plastic, but I think it’s unwise to compromise your vision on the driver’s side window. I’d be a little less worried about the passenger side if your main rear-view gave you sight out the back.
It’s not that difficult of a job to fix it. I’ve repaired a few myself on different vehicles, but then I’m an electrical engineer and I can trace down fairly quickly if it’s a blown fuse or a bad motor or if it’s the wiring in between. It could also be a mechanical problem, but usually you can hear the motor spinning if it is.
Any competent mechanic should be able to fix it in a day. I don’t think you’ll have any problem getting it fixed by the weekend. Just call around and drop it off somewhere tomorrow morning.
If for some reason you can’t get it fixed, you can pop off the door panel, lift the window up, and wedge it in place with a stick. Getting the door panel off without breaking any of the plastic trim pieces can be tricky on many vehicles. Usually there are a couple of well-hidden screws that you need to remove, and then the rest of it is just held in place with clips. In the good old days they used to use metal clips and they were no problem, but these days everyone uses cheap plastic clips. If you break some you can buy a bag of them from the dealer, but you will have to pay dealer prices for them.
You can usually wedge a stick with a notch in the top of it into place, and the notch will prevent it from sliding off to the side and letting the window drop.
I had a switch go on me before. A jumper battery pack can be used to get the window up if you pull the door panel, and I hate doing that because they don’t go back on right for me. I don’t think it should be hard to find a mechanic to diagnose it, and probably get the window back up. After it happened to me and I got the window up with the jumper pack the switch worked again to get the window down, which was stupid to try out because it just got stuck down again.
Try opening/closing the door (90% open then 90% closed back and forth) while holding the switch in the “up” position with the ignition on. If the problem is a broken wire in the door hinge area, this might give momentary contact to coax it up.
If it’s an electrical problem (motor/switch/wiring) rather than a mechanical problem (regulator mechanism), which I suspect from your description, it won’t be possible to raise the glass by hand without disconnecting the motor from the regulator.
If you go the duct-tape route, use clear acetate in place of plastic. Art supply houses might have it, or go to your local print shop. Some still use it for stripping negatives.
If you’re popping off the door panel, why not try manually turning the lead screw to lift the window into place? Even if full travel is impractical, you could get enough glass into gripping range to pull it up and wedge it.
If it’s a mechanical failure (regulator, bolt fell out, something broke, something jammed) it’s almost always accompanied by noise. Furthermore, unless it coincidentally suffered an electrical failure at the same instant, you’d be able to hear the motor trying to spin when the switch is first pressed.
If I understand correctly, there is no sound whatsoever from inside the door when the switch is pressed. That makes it a virtual certainty that it’s an electrical failure, and all told it seems extremely unlikely that there’s a mechanical failure.
IF THERE IS NO MECHANICAL FAILURE, THE GLASS AND REGULATOR ARE ATTACHED TO THE MOTOR WHICH WILL NOT BUDGE FROM TRYING TO MOVE THE GLASS. THE GLASS CANNOT BE RAISED WITHOUT EITHER DISCONNECTING SOMETHING OR BYPASSING THE ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.
By all means check the fuses and try the door flexing technique I mentioned above. If the problem persists it will require accessing the switch (should be removable without taking off the door panel) and/or the components inside the door. A test light and jumper wires will be highly desirable and probably necessary to test, diagnose, and bypass the problem.
Haven’t gotten to the fuses yet. I tried the door opening/shutting to no avail movement-wise, but I did hear something I overlooked. When pushed down, there is a very faint clickity clicking. The kind of noise you’d expect when something is at the end of its travel.
I’m assuming (and spelling it out here in case it’s wrong) is that if I’m hearing some sort of movement with the switch down, the fuse is probably good.
I pulled out and disconnected the switch. Got my continuity tester, and stared at it for a good minute or two before taking pictures. It’s probably blindingly obvious, but in this case I’m not sure which contacts to test. I uploaded a crude diagram of how they’re connected and some images of the switch to imgur here. Rather than scribble out wires, I drew some dashes below the switch to represent the wiring harness and labelled them with the corresponding lead.
It looks to me like terminals A and B are either side of the switch. So you should have continuity across them when the switch is engaged and not otherwise. Since you know the passenger side is working, maybe check if that is the case for terminals C and D.
I’m guessing by the gnarly rust on that part that there’s been some moisture behind the door panel.
These things usually aren’t obvious at first meeting, but can make perfect sense once you know how it’s supposed to be. I hope you can put the following together with what you see to make sense of it.
Each window motor has two wires. If one wire has + and the other has - , the motor will rotate. Switch the + & - around and it will rotate the opposite direction.
The wires for the left window are red and green, for the right window red/black and green/black. At rest, all four wires are connected to + .
When you press the switch, one of the wires for the window is disconnected from + and connected to - , and the motor should turn. As best I can tell, for the left window red to - (while green stays on + ) is for up, green to - (while red stays on + ) is for down (if that’s reversed, you’ll figure it out). Check to see which terminal on the switch loses + when the switch is pressed for up, then while holding the switch in the up position* apply - to that terminal. If the switch was the problem (and it sounds likely that’s the case) this will raise the window.
*Very important to apply ground ONLY when the switch is pressed and ONLY to the terminal that loses + when it’s pressed – otherwise you’ll make a dead short and pop the fuse or circuit breaker or whatever protects the circuit.